


springtime bloom

by tunnelOFdawn



Series: spring [1]
Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Angst, Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Youkai, Youkai Natsume Takashi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 06:22:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16235978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tunnelOFdawn/pseuds/tunnelOFdawn
Summary: When Takashi dies, he dies young, like his grandmother and his parents. He is eighteen years old and newly graduated from high school. He takes a year off before going to college. He loves his home far too much to abandon it so easily.When Takashi dies, he comes home.The yōkai no longer speak about Natsume Reiko.Or, wherein, death is not the end for Natsume Takashi, though it is the end for his family and friends.





	springtime bloom

When Takashi dies, he dies young, like his grandmother and his parents. He is eighteen years old and newly graduated from high school. He takes a year off before going to college. He loves his home far too much to abandon it so easily.

The world stretches out in front of him—endless horizons. He has dreams; he has aspirations. They spill forth from his slender form like water breaking through a dam. The force of them overwhelm him in a heady joy.

"I want to be a social worker," Takashi says.

Touko smiles with creased eyes.

"Ah, Takashi," Shigeru exhales. There is a look that can only be described as pride—a pride so fierce that it warms Takashi up from head to toe. It is a hot bath loosening muscles and summoning slumber.

Takashi is kind, his closest family and friends agree.

* * *

When Takashi dies, he comes home.

"Where else would I go?" Takashi laughs softly. His laugh is different. It is wind chimes in a howling wind.

He is no ghost ready to haunt the living world. Godhood becomes him. When they ask him god of what, he says, "I am the god of the springtime bloom." There is something foreign in his voice. It is ever so slightly off, as if it isn't only Takashi speaking.

* * *

Takashi dies in spring with a crown of wildflowers. It's almost funny the way he dies—gruesomely funny. It's the sort of death that lends a wry tone to a smile.

The midranks lead Takashi and Madara through the forest. A celebration, they cry. It is finally spring. The flowers are in full riotous bloom and the trees are resplendent in a leafy green. Birdsong and burbling brooks accompany their travel. It is such a picturesque scene that Takashi can scarce believe it. He never would have dreamed of such peace in the days  _before_.

They go deeper into the forest. Laughter echoes between them, fed by their joyous contributions. Smiles adorn their faces—wide and narrow, alike. Vitality renders their forms in a sharp focus and a glow that smothers the darkness.

A dead tree branch falls with all the sound of thunder and all the fury of lightning bisecting the firmament. Had it been thin and near the ground, the branch would have been of no import. Yet, that is not that story—a story where Takashi experiences another near-death and gets scolded by Nyanko-sensei for carelessness. A story where Takashi returns home to family and friends. A story where he learns the moral of appreciating his life and living day by day in recognition of that lesson. This is not that story. He does not live another day. It would be disingenuous to imply otherwise.

Takashi dies.

In the sunlight, there is a curious sheen to the blood pooling around his head. The yōkai notice. Hope coalesces. The humans do not notice. Grief overwhelms.

When they burn his body, it is then, and only then, that his spirit loosens its moors and breaks free of that mortal shell. He does not dissipate into that nebulous realm of the dead. His form has all the consistency of a yōkai—strangely tangible but with a lightness that defies gravity and time.

A wreath of wildflowers crown his head in impossible colors. They shimmer iridescent in the sunlight. There is a depth to them lacking in mortal flowers. Similarly, his clothing is a raucous burst of color that beguiles the eye. He wears an old-fashioned kimono, heavy with crimson brocade and adorned with gilded embroidery. Chrysanthemums and peonies intertwine in a seamless ease that ought to look gauche but verges into a fantastical beauty.

Takashi does not look human.

His feet are bare and sink into the earth. It yields under his feet. With every step he takes, flowers bloom in profusion. Existing flora lean in towards him. Vines climb up his legs in a grasp that is both choking and comforting.

* * *

_Knock-knock_  goes a fist on a door.

"Are you Natsume Takashi's guardian?" an officer queries. He has an expression of reluctance on his lined face. His shoulders hunch inward. Those dark eyes of his linger everywhere but for Touko's eyes. They are too warm, he thinks. He watches her smile, polite but sincere. He does not want to watch that smile and the light in her eyes disappear.

"Yes, I am," Touko confirms.

"May I come in?" he says, hat in hand.

Touko ushers him in. Introductions are made though later she will recall nothing. They have tea. They sit down together in silence. There is something wrong, she knows. And who else is so familiar with trouble that it hangs off him if not her son?

"Where is my son?" Touko asks. Her voice quivers, as if she were glass balancing on an edge—see-sawing in an uncertainty of existence. Her breaths echo loudly in the room in a staccato rhythm. She clutches her handmade teacup. It should crack, she thinks. It should. (Why won't it, she almost thinks with a hysteria that would unbalance her.) The force in her hands is an unfamiliarity that she cannot control.

"Please calm down," the officer murmurs.

"I am calm," Touko says. The officer's statement incites anything but calmness. Why won't he speak? Why won't he tell where her son is? Why does he hesitate?

"Your son," he begins…

There is a point when emotions overwhelm a person such that the emotions no longer affect a person. A haze overcomes Touko. She can scarcely remember the contents of the conversation except the most vital point of all—that of her son's death.

Schoolchildren wandered around in the forest and stumbled upon a cooling corpse. A pudgy cat was perched on the boy. He pawed desperately at the boy, as if confused by the lack of movement. He meowed. He purred. He  _wailed_.

Nyankichi-kun never comes home. It is another devastation that makes havoc of Touko's and Shigeru's carefully tended grief.

* * *

"Sensei," Natsume says faintly, "what happened?" He stares down at his hands. They do not feel like hands. There is a delay between thought and action. His body is not right. His movements are sluggish, like walking through water, as he examines himself.

Madara is quiet for a long moment. "Took you long enough," he croaks out eventually. He swipes at Takashi with an uncharacteristically vicious paw. Usually, it's a light swipe meant to chide. It's usually all bluster. But today is not usually. It is an anger that Madara cannot help but express. He wants to say, I sat on your cooling corpse for too long. I watched you die in a pool of your own blood.

"Long enough?" Takashi repeats. The words are heavy in his mouth. The contortions his tongue takes are unfamiliar to him. It's a reflexive action but there is a hesitation he cannot quell. As if this mouth of his is not his at all.

"You're dead, you idiot," Madara hisses. His body arches up and he flashes sharp teeth. Stupid boy had gone and died on him. Stupid boy died so easily. A tree branch of all things felled Takashi as easily as the saw does lumber.

"I'm not dead," Takashi laughs. Dizziness sweeps over him, shunting his earlier thoughts aside. He is alive. He has a body. He is flesh and blood. Is there anything more alive than that?

"Fool," Madara says, "look at yourself."

* * *

"I am here! Don't cry, Touko-san!" Takashi pleads. His hands yearn to make contact. They pass through Touko. Her cries pause with a shudder and resume with as much alacrity as before.

Madara watches. There is something in his chest that squeezes tighter and tighter with every second that passes by. Yōkai do not endure grief—they become grief. Humans are not meant to become yōkai. Takashi's blood does him no good.

"Boy," Madara sighs (now he'll always be a boy), "you don't have enough power to manifest."

"And when will I?" Takashi says, high and wavering.

"Wait a few years," Madara croaks. He licks at his paw and grooms himself with a cultivated air of disinterest. Takashi can feel the insincerity in the gesture. They've known each other for so long. Yet, the familiarity is no balm on his soul when he cannot touch or talk to Touko.

"That's…too long," Takashi whispers. He cannot abide by the thought of no contact. However, do Touko-san and Shigeru-san truly want a specter to hover in their lives? He had seen Touko's flinch. Yōkai were not meant for humans. It never ends well. He had seen proof enough of that.

Takashi loves his family too much to cause them pain.

* * *

"I haven't eaten in so long," Takashi realizes. How odd to have forgotten such a vital need. He barely remembers his old body. This new form of his does not hunger and does not thirst. There are no random pains that fade quickly. He does not bruise easily. He does not cut easily. The heat does not affect him. The cold does not affect him. In fact, a lot of things do not easily affect his body. He is static. Takashi had never realized how dynamic humans are in comparison to yōkai.

* * *

There is a shrine set up for Takashi. It's a memorial for his mortal life but truly, it becomes a yōkai's shrine. There is power in remembrance—a remembrance that becomes belief. They think, surely, he isn't really dead. Denial fosters hope. Intellectually, they know he is dead but in their heart of hearts, they know that there was always something  _off_  about Takashi. It makes death seem disconnected from a person like him. As if they were on parallel paths.

Flowers bloom until they rot on his shrine. They creep up and shimmy their way in an inexorable push for conquest. They grow in and out of season in a riot of color. It baffles the townspeople. Sometimes, out of the corners of their eyes, they can  _see_  plants bloom and rot in an accelerated pace. The cycle repeats.

When springtime rolls around again, his shrine experiences more traffic—both human and yōkai. They do not know why they continue to return. It is an imperative deeply cultivated within them that blooms in the springtime. A primal directive unfurls.

"I feel so warm," Takashi begins to say as each day passes. He clutches at his chest. His muscles loosen in that warm glow. He sprawls out on the earth with his arms and legs akimbo. The earth reaches back—sucking him in. Roots capture his ankles in an embrace that Takashi cannot help but bask in. There is power in this—of the earth freely given.

Madara watches, even as every fiber in his being aches to move.

* * *

"Your garden is blooming very well this year, Touko."

"Yes…yes, it is."

* * *

"Sometimes," Tanuma murmurs, "I think he's still alive. I turn around but no one's there." He leans against Taki. Their spines curve into the grooves of the tree.

Taki dips her head down and scuffs a foot against the dirt. Her legs extend fully. "Sometimes," she mimics, "I set up circles. It's silly. As if that one day Natsume will step into it and I could see him again." She pauses with a wry smile. "As if he ended up a yōkai. I know that's not how it works."

* * *

"We taught him how to ride a bike. It's dumb. But that's all I can think about."

"And…n-now he'll never ride a bike ever again."

"He'll never do a lot of things now."

* * *

"Reiko's line dies young," a group of middle-aged women whisper. It is an ineffective form of subtlety. Their whispers are harsh and audible, like wind rushing through trees.

Touko smiles tightly when they give their condolences. Their words rust over the steel of her heart. She wants to sand away the impurity of their words. She cannot bear the thought of their narrow minds constraining Natsume Takashi's existence to a single comment. As if he was not a boy with endless potential and a kindness that those old biddies lack. As if he was not  _her_  boy.

She is too polite to chastise them but oh, how she  _burns_. They can tell. They leave with uneasy smiles. A bitter part of her thinks,  _Good riddance._ She is not accustomed to bitterness but grief does strange things to a woman.

Shigeru does not burn—he wilts. He goes through the motions like a puppet with too much slack. Work is performed by rote memory. He takes the train home. He cannot fathom driving in his condition. The sharp lens of focus and attention turns hazy into a blurriness that he cannot blink away. The world is a bad dream from which he cannot wake.

"Where is my son?" Shigeru asks. It is a nightly question. When he is alone, the enormity of his loss strikes him and robs the breath out of his chest.

"Takashi," he savors.

Secretly, guiltily, he whispers, "Fujiwara Takashi." They had never wanted to cut Takashi's ties with his parents and so had never approached the idea of a name change. They were content with what Takashi freely gave them. But now, that lack of a family name pains him.

Shigeru looks at the clay cups in the cabinet. Smashing them would be so easy. His hand reaches out.

* * *

Fujiwara Touko and Fujiwara Shigeru keep Natsume Takashi's room pristine. Not a thing out of place. An unmade futon still lingers. A drawer not fully pushed in juts out. Pictures embedded into a cork board. Paper and writing utensils organized neatly on a desk.

When they come in to dust off, they sweep away cherry blossom petals every month. They watch curtains flutter in a breeze from an unopened window. Touko and Shigeru are vaguely aware that there is more to life than they perceive. Touko remembers crows; Shigeru remembers Natsume Reiko. It is a cold comfort when they cannot hug Takashi nor speak to him. If it is him that lingers, it is a painful realization. Their boy, so close, yet so far. How terribly sad he must be. Their boy, with golden eyes.

* * *

Takashi watches Taki set up the circle. He takes a step forward. Madara, in his greater form, plucks him up by the nape of his neck. He holds him gently in his maw. He gives a little shake, like remonstrating a pet for bad behavior.

Madara retreats into the forest with Takashi. Takashi protests the entire way, reluctant to use the full force of fledgling powers to fight.

With a huff, Madara sets Takashi down. He folds himself and sets his head on his paws. "What a cruel boy you are, Takashi," Madara intones. His voice rumbles the earth. It makes no difference. The earth supports Takashi. He stands still with clenched fists.

"Me, cruel? When you took me away from Taki?" Takashi says incredulously.

"You're not thinking straight, you idiot. Would you condemn your friends and family to a half-life? You cannot live in a circle forever and nor can they live tethered to your circle. Why would you tempt them with what you cannot give? All you would be doing is abandoning them again.

"Takashi, you won't be able to manifest for years. Taki's circle isn't sustainable. What's more is that she'll get caught eventually. Exorcists are cautious and sometimes for good reason."

Madara often likes to play the fool—an indolent, insolent cat out for himself and sake. But Madara has not lived so long by being a fool. ("Boy," Takashi remembers Madara saying, "I was old long before your country even existed and I will exist long after it dies.")

Takashi loves his friends too much to cause them pain.

* * *

"It was just bad timing," Natori grimaces. "Nature can be just as deadly as yōkai, Matoba."

"I still think that more questioning of that fat cat wouldn't be amiss," Matoba says smoothly. He flicks a glance at Madara prowling outside the Fujiwaras' front door.

"Don't be an idiot, Matoba. It's like there's nothing underneath all that hair," Natori mutters.

If Natsume were here, they would be in a world of hell for infringing upon his friends and family. He had always done his best to keep them safe and happy. He had never wanted his otherworldly excursions to bleed into his personal life. Natsume was a sweet kid who didn't deserve to die so young and from a tree branch of all things. His death is senseless.

* * *

The yōkai no longer speak about Natsume Reiko.

They speak of Natsume-sama, he of the springtime bloom. Listen close: benevolent god that he is, he will help you in all your troubles. You need only ask. But do not cross those under his protection. He is a god of nature and nature can be cruel. He will water your crops and drown you in your home. He will make your lands so fertile that they will choke the life out of you.

And you will feed his springtime bloom.

At times, Madara does not recognize the god before him. But the kindness—palpably Natsume Takashi—never goes away. It is only reinforced by a harshness that is a testament to his survival.

* * *

"I was old long before your family gained the sight and I will exist long after they die," the god whispers to the exorcist. Long golden hair sweeps against the exorcist's neck. The scent of cherry blossoms smothers him.

Vines climb and paralyze the exorcist. He struggles to no avail. For the first time in his life, he is scared. This is not a fight he will win. In fact, this is not at all a fight.

"I knew Matoba Seiji and Natori Shuuichi in their prime," the god hisses. "I knew them when they were young men unsure of themselves. I knew Natori Shuuichi and Matoba Seiji before they revitalized their clans. If they could not seal me, then what hope do you have hundreds of years later? You and your family are nothing. You walk in the shadows of giants and do not realize you are stumbling in the dark."

Matoba Seiji and Natori Shuuichi, the exorcist listens in awe. They were famous figures from the golden age of exorcism. They revitalized the dying world of the exorcists. Their skill had been balanced by their compassion.

Exorcist-yōkai fatalities had dropped significantly in their tenure. They had revolutionized the exorcist world by negotiating alliances with yōkai. Matoba Seiji even lost an eye—paying his family's long-standing debt in exchange for peace. No longer were exorcists considered faithless and feckless by yōkai. The word of an exorcist became as equally as binding as that of a yōkai.

"But I am a kind god. Do not return to my forest, to my town, to  _my_  lands. Do not be foolish, little exorcist. Do not attack the weak. Do not attack the innocent. I will know," the god promises. He smiles.

When the god smiles, it is a sweet and shy smile. He looks more like a boy of eighteen years and less like a yōkai of hundreds of years. Those gold eyes of his are molten in the sunlight. Limned in the sun, he is a soft beauty that entices a person to let go of all of their pain and confide all of their secrets.

"I never enjoy hurting people," the god whispers. "Please…"

Vulnerability is a strangely compelling look on this god. The exorcist is enamored.

Another human falls in love with Natsume Takashi.

They cannot help themselves.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm open to constructive criticism (like dialogue, characterization, etc.) and very open to kudos and comments. 
> 
> Also on tumblr as [tunnelOFdawn](https://tunnelofdawn.tumblr.com/). I post fic previews and drabbles on there now. Also, I'm always looking for blogs to follow.


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